The Fabric Room and a search for the perfect button

A few months ago I had the pleasure of spending time with Permanent Style’s Simon Crompton when he paid a visit to Toronto’s LeatherFoot Emporium. While walking the streets of the city together, he was particularly taken by my 1980’s Canadian military field coat and wondered if it had been tailored. As much as he liked it, though, Simon did have one suggestion to improve the jacket: replace the plastic green buttons with horn overcoat buttons. He felt – correctly – that it would make the jacket look even more tailored and unique instead of just a nice piece of army surplus.

The problem was finding horn buttons in Toronto. A number of the city’s tailors have private stocks they are not willing to part with, of course, while most button stores sell nothing but plastic. Those that do have horn have a very limited amount. And I needed something extremely specific: not only a dark brown horn button but nineteen of them, in three different sizes. And to make matters more difficult, because of the way the old buttons were attached, I needed something with two slits instead of four holes so they would attach easily.

Barely a week passed and as luck would have it a friend forwarded me a newsletter from Toronto’s Fabric Room. In it were the exact buttons I needed. Dark brown, horn, available in a few sizes and with a double slit in the middle. As Simon suggested, I think the buttons stylishly upgrade the jacket from military field coat to country jacket (which is helped by the corduroy collar).

Here you can see in detail not only the unique slits in the buttons but the lovely effect of the horn colouring:

And here are all three sizes: large down the placket, mid-size on the epaulettes and small on the collar:

The place I found these buttons, The Fabric Room, is definitely one of Toronto’s greatest sartorial hidden treasures. The shop opened several years ago as an extension of Lida Baday‘s design studio. After decades of travelling the world and buying fabric, notions, buttons and so on for her fashion line, Lida had built up such a mass of raw materials she decided to open what was essentially a working library. She could dig in for anything she needed but so could other designers, production companies and fashion students. And while Lida decided to shut down her design business a couple of years ago, The Fabric Room continues. The stock is no longer being replenished, because Lida no longer does her international buying trips, but the backlog is so large (200,000 meters of fabric and 13,000 zippers, for example) the shop will be able to run for many years.

The vast, vast majority of The Fabric Room’s stock is cloth and notions for women’s fashion. However, their collection of horn, bone and Corozo buttons is staggering. The photo above shows only a few boxes – there are dozens and dozens more in their stockroom. The buttons are all sourced from the world’s finest makers in Italy and sold at discounted wholesale prices.

I have written before on the impact buttons can make on a garment. They can add colour as well as texture: horn buttons tend to have a subtle sheen or even matte finish which is much smarter than plastic buttons. Most importantly, their imperfections make every button unique. I returned to the Fabric Room a few weeks after my amazing field coat find with another special project: a personally designed and custom made safari shirt that needed buttons.

The process to make this shirt was quite involved. It started with a visit to Sultan’s Fine Fabric for the jacketing. I chose a linen/silk blend which is heavy enough to hold its shape yet light enough to wear on hot days. Then up to a shirt maker who, after lengthy consultation, constructed the shirt, something they had not done before. And finally, my return to The Fabric Room for the buttons. With the help of Cara and Wendy – the two shop managers – I found these lovely dark brown horn buttons. They also came in two sizes – large for the placket, small for the pockets, epaulettes and cuffs.

The effect is exactly what I hoped: dressier than a true safari jacket but still more casual than a sport jacket. As much as buying your own fabric for custom garments is a sartorial necessity, sourcing your own buttons is the icing on the cake.

The Fabric Room is located at 70 Claremont St and is by appointment only.